Posted on 09/30/2009 1:52:08 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
General Motors said Tuesday it would wind down its Saturn brand after talks broke off with Penske Automotive Group on a bid for the nameplate.
GM said in a statement that Penske "has decided to terminate discussions" to acquire Saturn "because of the inability to source new products beyond what it had asked GM to build on contract."
"This is very disappointing news and comes after months of hard work by hundreds of dedicated employees and Saturn retailers who tried to make the new Saturn a reality," the US automaker said.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
“Lower the damn price and sell it, you idiots.”
GM is not a business. It’s a gubmint agency. It has no interest in money or logical decisions.
They’re just gumint employees covering their rear-ends.
Wasn't Saturn an experiment of NON-UAW at GM ?
The sad thing is, I’m actually eligible for the GM employee discount because my grandfather worked there for decades. However, Obama Motors will never see one dime from me. I’ll stick to my problem-free Acura, thanks.
My condolences.
[shudder]
Yeah but guys, Chevrolet is the heart of America! Even if the paint did peel off the roof of this 1986 Suburban I bought new and GM said it was just coincidence that the paint was falling off other GM’s, too.
parsy, who owns a Dodge and a Ford
If Penske wanted to buy a car company he should’ve bought Opel. And the Smart? Geez.
cheers
Jim
Ditto. I had an early SC2 5sp coupe that I loved. I used to be a bit of a”GM car guy”; owned a half-dozen of them over the years, but I’ll never buy anything from Government Motors.
Damned shame.
Who’d want to? All Saturn has been for the past few years is GM’s way of selling watered down European-design Opels shoddily assembled by the UAW, with the exception of the Sky and Astra. Unfortunately, those two cars do not a viable lineup make.
Good riddance.
Another lousy Government Motors brand bites the dust.
(Note I did own a SC2 and it was a piece of work).
Same here. 98 SC2, Crap trans. I feel bad for the workers but not for a company that was too stupid to live.
“My epiphany was caused by a 1981 Pontiac Phoenix...”
Reminds me of a friend who had a 1981 Chevy Citation. THe door locks were designed in such a way that in Wisconsin winters they were unusually susceptible to freezing. The hatch lock did not freeze up - so on several occasions two or three of us had to enter the car via the hatchback (and on one occasion had to exit that way as well.) The X-cars had to be the quintessence of shizzle.
I can recall several mid-late seventies GM cars whose door latches would freeze OPEN, so that an improvised rope or lever had to be gripped while driving to prevent the door flopping open on a curve.
This means more sales increase for Ford and Toyota.
“Wasn’t Saturn an experiment of NON-UAW at GM ?”
No.
Youch! That’s more of a problem, to be sure.
Contrast that with a 1996 Nissan I had which I traded in 8 years later with 127K miles - and the ORIGINAL clutch. I’m not saying the car was beat, but it wasn’t driven gingerly by any means. It’s like defying gravity, durability like that. The people I know who owned Saturns liked them, or perhaps liked the owner experience more than the car itself. I never found them interesting as products. But leave it to GM to score a perfect 10 on the dealership/customer service aspect of a brand - but then hitch it to dull products and production economics that never showed any green. Oy.
I dearly loved my 1997 Mustang GT, but the paint was peeling off in 6” x 12” sheets and Ford just didn’t see anything wrong with that.
GM built a “greenfields” plant down in Tennessee, and did not even put their chop on the brand for several years. You had to search to even find the connection between GM and Saturn. Only when Oldsmobile begin to fall out the endgate was there much attention paid to Saturn as a brand.
Saturn NEVER turned a profit for GM. They were a cult vehicle, made to resemble something like the Volkswagen cult that swept America in the 1960’s and early 1970’s, until air-cooled engines became unpopular for ecological reasons. Saturn was a half-hearted attempt to build something engineered here in the US that could compete on a par with Toyota or Honda (they failed). Million-dollar ideas with fifty-cent executions. The engineering was always better than the finished product, but that is a common failing of many products. There was always the inclination to chisel on the quality of the finished product and do the “economical” thing, substituting an inferior (but cheaper) component, in the hopes the failure rate would not be too high.
Sometimes, all the failures came together on one example.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.